BUENOS AIRES, Argentina, Nov. 18, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- 0xbow (pronounced "OX-bow"), the Nashville-based company behind Privacy Pools, announced today it has closed a $3.5 million seed round led by Starbloom Capital. The raise follows the Ethereum Foundation's integration of Privacy Pools into its Kohaku wallet, demonstrated at the Cypherpunk Congress during Devconnect in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Privacy Pools has processed $6 million in transaction volume across more than 1,500 users since its March 2025 launch on Ethereum mainnet. The protocol has completed 1,186 withdrawals to date.

The Ethereum Foundation's decision to integrate Privacy Pools into Kohaku marks the first instance of privacy-preserving technology being incorporated into core Ethereum infrastructure. The integration demonstrates growing institutional acceptance of compliant privacy solutions following years of regulatory uncertainty around cryptocurrency mixing services.

The seed round included Coinbase Ventures, BOOST VC, Status Research & Development GmbH, Plutos Capital, and angel investors including Balaji Srinivasan, Sam Kazemian (Frax), and Dan Finlay (Metamask). The company previously raised a pre-seed round in March 2024 that included Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.

Privacy in cryptocurrency faces a fundamental challenge: blockchain transparency exposes users' financial activity, but previous mixing tools that obscured transactions created regulatory risk. Privacy Pools addresses both issues simultaneously.

The protocol uses zero-knowledge proofs combined with an Association Set Provider (ASP) which is a ...